faith keep me strong
by strangervision
Summary: Natasha goes into a coma after a mission, Clint tries not to overreact, but he will not leave her bedside. He mostly sings to her.


Comatose!Natasha and Angsty!Clint. No character death, but only because I can't write it. If I actually tried I might spoil my computer with the flood of my own feels. Have at it!

* * *

It's silent here where they are. She isn't with him but they're together in the stillness, each of them alone. The air smells like bleach and sheets that do not belong in any home, with anyone. She has always been his home. He has always known better than to let her be. He read it once, on a poem on the net Natasha had left on her computer when she took a break from writing reports to search for food in his safe-house. _You cannot make homes out of people_, it had said, _someone should have already told you that_ and the notion stuck with him. Now every time he looks at her the lines are a mantra in his head.

Every steady, unforgiving beep from the machine keeping time (and life) beside him is a quandary. She is a glass half empty and half full, and the sounds simultaneously relieve him of worry and twist his insides with a dull ache. Clint is silent, but silence is something he is used to. Stillness, not so much, especially not around Natasha. Her face is peaceful but it is also barely alive, and the thought of that makes him bow over and press his face into her shoulder, just above the sheets. He inhales and he can smell her scent, the hard edges of the hospital's air bleeding in at the sides. He hates to think that this is how she will be taken – not amidst the gunfire and the smell of burning and death, but in a quiet, white place that is clean like her ledger will never be.

He doesn't leave. He is the only personnel they allow in her room besides the medical aides and doctors and his superiors. His concept of time grows vague, blur like the memories of her falling that he refuses to re-visit. They let him stay.

* * *

On the third day, when his back is stiff and his mind tired from trying to absorb the book he brought in (Natasha's favourite collection of poetry), he closes his eyes for what feels like a moment, and a few hours pass. He doesn't realise how exhausted he is. When he wakes, she's still sleeping like the princess she never got to be.

The nurses have taken to bringing him food, which he consumes gratefully, and an extra bed has been set up beside hers, but Clint will not leave her side. He weaves his fingers into hers and realizes that he is shaking. That night, he manages to gently shift her warm (_thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you_) body to the side of the generous bed. He's sure she won't mind as he stretches out beside her. He takes regular baths and changes clothes; everything is routine, save for the fact that he is keeping vigil by her side. Careful not to disturb her IV tubes, he slips an arm around her and sleeps.

He dreams of her running her fingers through his hair and holding him close during panic attacks, waiting for him to come down from wherever he is in his head. He dreams of holding her through hers, when her body is trembling violently, when she is an earthquake in the body of a woman, until she clutches him back and presses her face into his skin and comes back to him. When he wakes she is warm but so still beside him, and he turns his face into her neck and tries to breathe; tries not to break down.

* * *

Mid-way through the fourth day, Stark comes in with a guitar Clint recognizes as his. It's worn and comfortable in his grip as he tests the strings, and starts to tune it the best way he knows how. Stark nods and says, "You're welcome, Hawk," softer than Clint has ever heard him speak, and the knowledge that washes him is comforting enough for the next hours, because now he knows this: Tony Stark has more human in him than he lets on, and if that's possible, maybe Natasha coming back isn't so hard to imagine.

Because it's day and the nurses are coming soon to fulfil their duties like clockwork, Clint settles onto the extra bed and pulls his legs up under him. He wants to be somewhere high up, and maybe it's because he wants to assess the situation again, see if he's missed anything that will let him fix this somehow, but the need to be close by if – when – she wakes is more pulling, so he stays. He's strumming softly, his voice quiet but sharp against the backdrop of the humming machines when the nurses leave.

When he runs out of country songs, he sings older pop songs that haven't been on the radio for awhile. By the time dinner is done and night has fallen, he has put down the guitar and slipped into her bed to sit by her side, one hand twined in hers, the other carded through locks of her hair.

"_I know I'll be okay, though my skies are turning gray_," He's singing quietly, and then he starts to imagine Natasha's mellow, lyrical voice above his. Keeping that in mind, he allows himself to doze off beside her.

* * *

The pattern runs for a few weeks, and for all that his codename is, Clint is as stubborn as a mule. He doesn't leave for more than is necessary; everyone wonders how he gets through his days. The team comes to visit, but they never stay long. Clint sometimes thinks it's because Natasha's silence and peacefulness has them uneasy as much as his quiet watching does.

Steve comes along with a book sometimes, and they sit by her bedside reading, and when Bruce is there, he mostly is quiet, too. He leaves with a firm pat on Clint's shoulder. Clint stores these gestures like memos in his mind, carefully remembering to return their kindness in better ways after Natasha wakes. He is in no state to do so right now, and they know. Pepper mostly comes by with her soft looks and small smiles, and somehow it's reassuring. She leaves food and soup for him sometimes, and he thanks her. She says it's no problem at all; tells him that Tony wants to come but doesn't quite know how to be a comfort, so he stays in his lab and tells Pepper he'll pay for everything she brings there. Clint manages a small smile at this, but it doesn't feel like it comes from inside. Mostly, he would give anything to see Natasha's lips quirk again.

By the third week, Clint has taken to smoothing Natasha's locks off her forehead. It's a gesture that sometimes has him screwing his eyes shut and turning away, because it feels so much like loss, when she won't – can't – respond or glare at his affection. He tells himself to compartmentalize, but there is no mission to take on, nothing he can use to push away his heart right now. He huddles down into her bed again, draws her close, and tries not to cry. He hasn't for the past weeks, he will not start now.

"_It's really good to hear your voice, saying my name, it sounds so sweet_," are the lyrics that slip past his lips, and he nearly chokes on the sorrow of that statement. The guitar is something he can hold on to, something tangible and firm under his touch that does not give way, but soon he's shaking so hard that he has to put it down and curl into himself he sings – almost weeps – that line over and over. Every line in his body is weary from holding itself tense, as if one wrong step could take her from him forever. He's holding onto the music and the words of the line, his one buoy to the world, trying not to slip into panic as would be normal. He has to hold it together for her, but he's just terrified and nothing has changed from the day she went down and (not for the first time) he wishes he'd just been that bit quicker with his arrows.

As suddenly as it started, it stops, and Clint steels himself. He stuffs his lunch down and braces his body, leaving for the shooting range. His re-familiarises himself with his bow and arrow, shooting targets down as fast as he can, pushing until perspiration is running down his back and stinging his eyes. He rests for a brief moment, before deciding that he wasn't good enough with his bow to save her, and isn't going to be good enough even now. He feels a slight tremble in the bones of his arms as he raises the one gun he owns and starts to train with that. If he can use a faster weapon, maybe it'll make up for when he was too late. Maybe the shots he's firing will wake her in the way she hates most, and she'll come down to the range just to shut him up and make him stop disturbing her rest. Whatever it takes, Clint swears he will be faster the next time round. (He hopes, prays hard, that there will be a next time).

For the next few days this is the only change to his routine: Sleep, wake, eat, shower, train, shower, rest.

He's training with a viciousness he never has before, as if he isn't already good enough. He feels like this is atonement somehow for a mess he didn't create; as if by making himself stronger and faster he can make up for all the days he grieved over Natasha's horrifically still (but alive) body.

* * *

On the second Sunday after this starts, he takes a break to sit by Natasha's bed and sing softly again. He's singing the same lines he was when this fierce desire to train to the death overtook him, and he can't stop his fingers from repeating the chords. Suddenly, he's singing the chorus over and over, until Natasha's head rolls to the side. His breath catches, his entire body stiff with the shock of witnessing it, then her eyes open slower than they usually do, and she's gazing at him with a vagueness in her eyes that is hard to read.

"Nat?" he asks softly.

"Clint," she breathes, and the corners of her lips quirk up just the slightest bit, "How long have I been out?"

"Five weeks," he barely manages, his mouth suddenly dry, his entire body quaking as he slides as gently as he can manage into the bed and lifts her slowly again him, holding her close.

"Tired," she murmurs, "Sorry it's been so long," and then she lifts an exhausted arm onto his and presses lightly on his arm, and it's enough that he's crying, tears of relief soaking into her hospital gown as he tries desperately not to grip her too tight in his need to feel her in his arms, more alive than she's been in the excruciating weeks that have marched past.

It's half an hour before he gets himself together enough to call the medical personnel into the room. After they clear her, he's still sitting in her bed, much to everyone else's disapproval, but she leans against him and closes her eyes. For a swift second, Clint's heart clutches in panic at the sight of that smooth face again, but there is more colour in her face than there has been, and the machines are not beeping because she's insisted on having them turned off now that she's back.

"Tasha?" he asks softly, looking down at her face.

"You have my favourite poetry here, Clint," she sighs, "You've gone all soft. Read me something,"

"How have I gone soft if I've been reading all the macabre stuff that you like?" he teases back, and she smiles softly, and he knows they're going to be okay. That thought alone is enough to make him reach to the stand for the book, and his voice is hoarse when he starts to read to her.

When he's done, she hums quietly, tunelessly, craning her neck up to kiss his jaw lightly. It's a show of appreciation, a benediction; it's Noah's dove coming back with an olive branch in its beak – a symbol of life. He turns his face to hers and kisses her, lips pressing over her soft, warm mouth. His hand curls into the hair at the nape of her neck, and her fingers fist in his shirt as she presses closer. There's the warm slide of her tongue against his, and then she pulls back, settling comfortably into his arms again.

"You overreacted when I was out, didn't you," she says wryly, after awhile, some of her old hardness and personality weaving back into her voice, and he can't help the smile he presses into her hair. He thinks about it, and concedes that maybe he has been overreacting a little, and Natasha's soft huff against his chest is indication enough that he doesn't have to answer verbally. He sleeps in her bed again that night, and every night until they let her back into her own house, and even then, he's hard pressed to let go of her. For weeks after that, he thinks that possibly the best feeling ever is waking up to her limbs tangled with his, her soft face pressed into his neck, her mouth already pressing tender kisses to his skin. Sometimes, the best feeling in the world is also being pinned to the sparring mat by her heaving, active, nimble body. As long as she's moving and not just _breathing_, he thinks that he will allow her to beat him to pieces every single time they train.


End file.
